Collide, a GenAI Platform for the energy sector, announced the closing of its $5 million seed round, led by Mercury Fund. Bryan Sheffield, Billy Quinn, David Albin, and several other oil and gas leaders also joined.
Collide also counts leading oil and gas executives and firms as investors, including Embry Canterbury, Gene Shepherd, Dan Pickering, Steven Cobb, Trey Yates, and Arbo Ventures.
This new funding round will enable Collide to further enhance and advance the development of its GenAI-powered platform and strategically expand its engineering and technical teams.
Driven by a generational shift in its workforce, the energy industry stands at a unique place. Usually slow to embrace new technologies, the sector now faces an urgent need for innovation. Collide is at the forefront of transitioning from outdated legacy software to AI-native solutions.
Launched by oil and gas industry veterans, Collide was created to be the knowledge hub for the next generation of energy professionals. Initially designed as a professional network and digital community for technical discussions and knowledge sharing,
Collide has shifted its focus to the rollout of its enterprise-level AI-enabled solution. By integrating retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and advanced large language models (LLMs) with a specialized knowledge base, And Collide’s AI-native platform retrieves and synthesizes data from authoritative sources to deliver accurate, cited, and energy-focused insights to oil and gas professionals.
Collide’s platform uniquely accesses a comprehensive and industry-specific knowledge base, including technical papers, internal processes, and a curated Q&A database tailored to energy professionals. And this specialized foundation allows Collide to deliver accurate responses with real citations, ensuring precision and reliability by eliminating external noise and focusing solely on pertinent energy content.
Collide now services public and private enterprise oil and gas clients, and other private equity-backed E&Ps. Since launching, Collide has onboarded over 6,000 users to its community platform, growing at 11% month-over-month. Users span 122 countries, connecting energy professionals worldwide. And the platform currently delivers an estimated time savings of 25–33% for petroleum engineers. As Collide expands its generative AI portfolio, it aims to further streamline workflows across various oil and gas sector roles, freeing teams to focus on higher-value tasks and driving greater operational efficiency.
KEY QUOTES:
“The world’s greatest challenge today is an energy crisis, and we’re excited to have a partner in Mercury Fund that understands our vision and supports us as we work to empower energy professionals with the community and technology needed to power the world.”
- Collin McLelland, Co-Founder and CEO of Collide
“Co-founders Collin McLelland and Chuck Yates bring a unique understanding of the oil and gas industry. Their backgrounds, combined with Collide’s proprietary knowledge base, create a significant and strategic moat for the platform. Collide’s vertical AI approach is uniquely designed to tackle the complex challenges of the energy sector, delivering solutions that are more precise and impactful than those offered by general-purpose GenAI tools. This is exactly the kind of company Mercury seeks to partner with to drive transformative, industry-specific change.”
- Blair Garrou, Managing Partner at Mercury
